After last years cold snaps, researchers speculated that many of the non-native pythons in the River of grass couldn’t have survived. Now they are re-thinking that position. More than two dozen have been caught so far this year and the South Florida Water Management District says it removed six pythons from the Everglades in the last week alone. The snakes were recovered in areas where they were not previously found.

Burmese pythons are top predators known to prey on more than 20 native Florida species.